


Being human

by orphan_account



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-14 23:22:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2206932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier knows nothing but blood, confusion and pain. He is barely human. But when unexpected kindness comes from an unlikely source, he begins to remember what it means to be human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being human

**Author's Note:**

> Yo.
> 
> This will probably be a chapter that is much later within a longer WS story I've begun to plan. 
> 
> I got some of Natasha's story from "Black Widow Part Four: There's no place like home" written by Richard K. Morgan. Which is a wicked series, read it. 
> 
> I just wanted to post it to get some feedback. Any critique helps!
> 
> Much Love,  
> your Spider

He stared at the woman sitting opposite him. Her eyes seemed lit from within so intense was her stare.  
The Soldier had never felt much of anything, but in this moment a bubble of insecurity rose in his chest. She was so… so real! She felt like everything he was missing. Love, pride, even color for God’s sake! 

“I want to tell you something, but before I begin I want you to promise me you won’t interrupt.” She raised her eyebrows expectantly.

“I promise.” He said.

She sighed, and seemed to be readying herself. “When I was growing up I trained at the Bolshoi Ballet company. I was good… like really good. They expected me to go on to Prima Ballerina eventually. I was so happy, so dedicated, my whole perception of myself was as a Ballerina.  
I had one teacher who I admired more than the others. I worshipped him as only a young girl could. There was never anything inappropriate; he was like the preverbal father figure to me.  
Anyway, as you know, I was eventually taken away from this and begun my training to become a Black Widow. But even though I went through so much pain, so much darkness, I could always look back on those few happy years at the Bolshoi to get me through.  
I had to go back to Russia in 2005 for a mission, one of my first with S.H.I.E.L.D. I completed the mission easily, so I had a few days to kill before extraction.  
I hadn’t meant to, had told myself that I must not, but eventually I took a walk down memory lane. I visited the Bolshoi, posed as a reporter for an internet news site, and talked to the current director.  
I asked about the health of my old teacher. My heart was hammering I was so excited and nervous.  
The Director had never heard of him. I said ‘there must be some mistake’, and he checked on computer records. This teacher had never existed.  
I knew that at that time people were always being ‘disappeared’. Hell, I even did some of the ‘disappearing’ myself. So I began looking.  
I went back to the studios I had trained at. They were boarded up and in a state of sorry disrepair. I quickly broke in.  
As I walked in my heart leapt. Even though the wallpaper was rotten and peeling, even though the windows we’re boarded up, I still felt as if I had come home. I walked through, a stupid great grin on my face.  
I turned a corner, and spotted a door which I did not remember. I pushed the door open, and saw a chair. It was rotten and had spiders webs laced across it. It was like one of those dentists chairs that reclines to horizontal, but it had arm and feet restraints.  
I wondered if perhaps this place had been a dentists surgery after being studios, but it was then I spotted a TV screen, its glass broken in. And there, in the corner a IV drip stand. And on the top of the chair where the headrest should have been was what looked like some sort of cage.  
Then I felt like someone had driven a spike through my temple. I collapsed on the floor, then my vision went suddenly white.  
I saw a flash of my younger self, dancing in a perfect pirouette, except I wasn’t. I was on the television screen. Except it wasn’t me, because I could see my feet in front of me, bare of pointe shoes and strapped into that very chair.  
Another shot of pain through my head and I can hear me talking over me, taking readings from the dozens of machines around my restrained body.  
Another jolt, and I can see the man I thought was my dance teacher injecting my arm with some dark liquid.  
I came out of that place as fast as my legs could carry me. I was throwing up, trembling all over, and more furious than I had ever been in my life.  
I had never been a dancer. I had never been to the Bolshoi. I was never anything but an orphan trained to be a killer.  
That is why I am probably the only person here who understands what you are going through James.  
That is why I forgive you.”  
She broke her gaze then, and looked down. A tear dripped of the end of her nose.

“Yo-… you called me James.” He stammered. 

She sniffed loudly, and looked back at him. “You’re not the Winter Soldier to me any more.” She quirked the side of her mouth.


End file.
